Sausage machines such as that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,115,668 have a frame, a meat emulsion pump having metering gears to control meat emulsion flow; an elongated stuffing horn, a rotatable chuck, a linking device, a discharge horn and a conveyor with hooks thereon to carry linked product away from the machine. In more recent times, separate motors are used to drive the pump, the twister (chuck), the linker, and the conveyor.
Previous linkers required the user to set-up the machine by specifying RPM's individually for each element in the process (i.e. Pump, Linker, and Twister). There was no intuitive relationship which allowed the user to accurately benchmark these settings. Equations were provided in the operator's manual, but most users opted for a trial and error approach when performing this initial setup. Unfortunately, this often resulted in lost time, bursted casings, and wasted materials.
In the past, the pump established the base speed for the system, and the linker speed was to make adjustments for weight.
Maintaining the weight of the linked product has heretofore been a cumbersome task, and often involved manual weighing steps and some trial and error compensation steps.
Prior encasing machines had no broad ranging readout means for sensing when maintenance to the machine was necessary. As a result, needed maintenance is often overlooked.
It is therefore a principal object of this invention to provide a method and means for linking sausages that utilizes computer software and a computer display touch screen to use a statistic approach to control the various phases of manufacturing sausages.
A further object of this invention is to control the pump, twister, linker and conveyor through four separate motors and through a computer which can coordinate their functions, and by using the linker motor as a master control through the computer to control the remaining motors, to achieve a constant product feed rate.
A further object of this invention is to provide a method and means for linking sausage which can provide a straightforward, interactive fine tuning for weight control.
A further object of this invention is to provide a method and means for linking sausage which will monitor preventative maintenance schedules and signal their maturity to the operator.
A further object of this invention is to provide a method and means for linking sausage which will provide a system for automatically downloading weights from a remote scale to a control system.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a method and means for linking sausage to provide a control system that will minimize the number of filled links beyond a conveyor hook adjacent to the last full loop of linked products.
These and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.